


Everything Is Relative

by SevenEyes



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, Fix-It, Original Character(s), Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-30 01:07:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17214173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SevenEyes/pseuds/SevenEyes
Summary: A time-traveling OC meets a much younger Ruby Rose, still a student at Beacon. Ruby has a thousand questions about the future, and not all of them have pleasant answers.





	Everything Is Relative

**Author's Note:**

> This is my very first Ao3 post, so please excuse any formatting errors.

There are people who will tell you that time travel changes everything, and they are very, very wrong.

Oh, time travel changes _many_ things, certainly. Places are different. Little significant moments are different. To a certain extent, people are different, too.

Some things never change, however. For instance, this younger version of my teacher, Ruby Rose, still has an extreme fixation on weapons. Like, seriously, she might want to talk to a professional about this. 

Ruby shamelessly ogled the two blades. If she kept this up, she was going to start drooling. Not that I blame her; it was a masterpiece of weapon crafting. After a good thirty seconds, Ruby finally finds her voice again.

“It’s beautiful. What’s it called?”

I grinned.

“Last Whisper. My other weapon, the shorter one, is named Blaze. They’re part of a matched set of six blades.”

Ruby looks like she might literally explode from sheer joy.

“Who…”

Ruby visibly takes a steadying breath, trying to calm herself.

“Who forged them? And are they single?”

Abruptly, Ruby slapped a hand to her mouth, mortified. From behind her palm, I could hear a mumble of shame.

“And I can’t believe I just said that.”

I chuckled.

“You made them, Ruby. Or you _will_ make them, anyway. Fifteen years from now. They all incorporate shards of Crescent Rose.”

Ruby looks like she’s just been shot.

“Hang on, shards? Like _broken pieces?!_ Crescent Rose gets destroyed?! No fuc- er, no freaking way! I’d never, ever let anyone…”

I held up my hands in a conciliatory gesture.

“Woah! Please don’t hurt me. As it just so happens, you do- well, you _will_ get your revenge on the asshole who shatters Crescent Rose. After you’re finished with him, there isn’t enough left to fit in a shoebox, let alone a body bag.”

Ruby looks torn between pride and disgust. 

***

[thirty minutes later] 

“It was down to the two of us, you see. One of us had to die to power the temporal jump. Two people. One dies, one gets sent back. I tried to get to the sacrificial circle first, but you were faster. You were always faster.”

Ruby thinks about my words for a long time. Then she asks the question that I dread the most.

“Why didn’t Yang stop me from sacrificing myself? Why didn’t Weiss? Or Blake? Or Team JNR?”

She already knew the answer, but she wanted me to confirm it. Fuck. I hate this. I took a deep breath.

“Because… because they were dead, Ruby. All of them. We beat Salem, but at a horrible, _horrible_ cost. We had to watch all of our teammates die. Every one fought heroically, right up to the bitter end. I tried to…”

I swallowed, blinking back tears.

“I tried to stop you. From sacrificing yourself. You kicked me in the head, left me your weapons, and jumped into the circle. By the time I’d recovered, it was already too late. You… you gave me a message. For your younger self. Do you want to hear it?”

Ruby freezes, like a deer in headlights. Her mouth opens, then closes, but no sound comes out. Finally, her look of painful indecision is replaced by one of pure determination. Her eyes appear to be a darker shade of silver than before, but maybe it’s just a trick of the light.

“Yes. Please tell me.”

I school my expression.

“Okay. Your message is ‘tell Weiss how you feel. You’ll always regret it if you don’t.’ Oh, and a cute, sad smile, but I can’t really duplicate that. I’m sure you can imagine it, though.”

***

I frowned, because Ruby had asked me a tough question. More specifically, she'd asked how her future team (while they were still alive) faired in combat situations.

"Well, Ruby, think of a blender..."

***

“They’re good.” 

Thus spoke Oscar Pine, in the understatement of the century. 

Currently, Oscar and I were watching Team RWBY fight roughly a thousand Grimm of all shapes and sizes. All at the same time. In an open field with no cover. 

Since I am not a moron (and neither is Oscar, for that matter) the two of us were watching from a small hill a generous distance away from the action. Oscar was wrong, though. The four Huntress girls weren’t good; they were _in-fucking-credible._ Honestly, even using the term ‘fight’ is a little deceptive, because it implies that the Grimm might possibly win. ‘Slaughter’ is much more accurate language. 

The Grimm had overwhelming numbers, raw power, speed, reach, height advantage, and sufficient coordination to not trip over each other. It wasn’t great teamwork, not compared to the four girls at the center of the carnage, but it should have been enough. The dark tide of beasts should have simply swamped the four encircled warriors. The Grimm had nearly every advantage, here. 

The Grimm had no chance whatsoever. 

Ruby swung Crescent Rose around like it was weightless, and every strike ended one of the creatures in a puff of black ash. With no pattern that I could discern, the usually-adorable crimson terror occasionally interrupted her hurricane of death to shoot one of the minions trying to swarm her, blowing it apart with the gun aspect of her sniper-scythe. Honestly, I had no idea how she selected which Grimm to shoot, which ones to slice, and which ones to leave to her teammates. It was a mesmerizing, fast-paced dance. If the Grimm had conventional blood, Crescent Rose would have been soaked with it.

The other three huntresses weren’t exactly idle, either. Weiss danced around on glyphs that blatantly violated the laws of physics, and each precise stab of Myrtenaster killed or maimed an unlucky Grimm. Blake performed ridiculous acrobatics with Gambol Shroud’s whip-function, pulling Grimm into lethal stabs and point-blank gunshots like a conductor. 

Yang… well, Yang punched things to death with extreme prejudice. A corona of fire shone from her mane of blonde hair, burning nearby Grimm but never touching any of Team RWBY. The occasional gunshot from Ember Celica let Yang change direction impossibly fast. I was pretty sure that recoil didn’t work like that. _Shouldn’t_ work like that, I mean.

The level of coordination between the four of them was just totally insane. Every move from every fighter provided cover for at least one other person. Every attack was also a flanking action to support a follow-up strike from someone else. Over and over again, one of the RWBY gang exposed herself to otherwise-lethal attacks from Grimm talons… only to be rescued by a punch, stab, or slice from a teammate. 

It was like watching one mind in four bodies. 

If any of them missed a step, it could have been lethal. This was all theoretical, though, because none of them ever did. 

As if all of that wasn’t impressive enough, the four murder-machines seemed to actually be _enjoying_ their workout. Friendly banter punctuated the whole melee, and my enhanced hearing caught wind of a bet on who would end up with the most kills. During the whole massacre, the Huntress team kept up the same air of friendly competition you’d find at a video gaming tournament between friends. It was unbelievable. I finally snap out of my thoughts, and answer Oscar. 

“That’s putting it mildly. Got any more energy bars? Strawberry if you have them, but anything will do, really.”

Without taking his eyes off the battle, Oscar dexterously tosses one of the calorie-dense things to me.

As I munch on the survival bar, I notice that the curbstomp is coming to an end. Only a handful of Grimm remain, and those that have survived were the ones canny enough to avoid the killing zone that surrounded the four humans. These Grimm were a tad smarter, it seemed, but it didn’t matter. They died just like their dumber brethren. 

As the last monster disintegrated into ash, it quickly became apparent who had won the body-count competition. Yang, dispelling any illusions of maturity, seemed to be doing an elaborate victory dance, complete with sound effects. Blake, Ruby, and Weiss all gave simultaneous exasperated sighs. 

***

"... and you'll be pretty close. You guys _shred_ Grimm. It's terrifying."

Ruby nods, not bothering to keep her pride-filled look hidden.


End file.
